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This event is Co-Sponsored by the
National Committee on US China Relations

The National Committee on U.S.-China Relations is pleased to announce that Ambassador Susan E. Rice will be the national webcast speaker for our eleventh annual CHINA Town Hall, to be held on October 24, 2017.

In addition to her foreign policy experience as national security advisor (2013-2017) and U.S. permanent representative to the UN (2009-2013), Ambassador Rice also served as U.S. assistant secretary of state for African Affairs and senior director for African Affairs at the National Security Council. Her decades of public service and critical role in developing and executing the Obama administration's policies towards China make her perspective on the relationship especially relevant as we navigate this uncertain time in the bilateral relationship.

Following the webcast, Taiya Smith will lead a conversation on China’s role in managing global climate change. Motivated by its own need for security and environmental clean up, China has become the global leader in climate change action. The country’s use of coal — considered the single biggest contributor to anthropogenic climate change — has dropped every year since 2013, while its investments in clean energy, especially renewables have soared as has its recent focus on green finance. President Xi announced in 2016 that China was launching a national carbon trading system, the largest in the world. And yet, China continues to refrain from assuming political leadership, and instead appears to be shrinking its own ambition in the wake of the Trump administration’s ambivalence towards climate change.

Ms. Smith is currently the Director of the China Program at the Climate Leadership Council in Washington DC. Previously, she has served as former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s top advisor on China. She designed and managed the U.S.- China Strategic Economic Dialogue, the highest level dialogue between the two countries governments, and was the architect of the U.S-China Ten Year Cooperative Framework on Energy and the Environment, which continues to serve as the foundation of the bilateral relationship on energy and environmental issues. Ms. Smith is the founder of the Green Trust, a platform for innovation in environmental and clean energy technologies.